After posting the story of my knee injury, one of the fantastic staff members at Vibrant Nation emailed me, asking if I planned to post a follow up about the surgery and rehab. I had planned to, but when I checked my blog archives I discovered I’d never posted about them. Ooops! Time to play catch up.

As I write this it’s been almost two years since I had my surgery. If I close my eyes and concentrate I can almost reconnect with the pain. I don’t have children and therefore have not had the pleasure of experiencing labor pains. For me, knee surgery is the worst pain I have ever experienced. Ever.

I saw my surgeon two months ago when hubs had a meniscus repair. I’m sure my doc has sliced and diced a lot of knees in the past two years. He continues to comment on what a huge surgery mine was. I had severed my ACL and in his words “mangled” my meniscus in two places.

My surgery took two and a half hours, about 45 minutes longer than expected. One of the meniscus tears had not shown itself on the MRI. I’m just full of surprises.

The meniscus tears were shaved, but the ACL required removing that ligament and rebuilding it with a portion of my hamstring.

When I awoke from surgery I was pretty doped up with morphine. It wasn’t until a few hours later that the real fun would begin. Because this was outpatient surgery, I was expected to collect myself and leave the hospital by about 5 p.m. With the surgery taking longer than expected, I had less time to pull myself together.

By the time I left the hospital the morphine was wearing off. The pain was searing. I had a script for two narcotics (oxycodone and something else that I’ve forgotten). I don’t know why these prescription drugs are so popular on the street. They didn’t do a darn thing for me.

My sweet mom took me in for the first few days after surgery. My home has stairs and I couldn’t climb them. Not only was I dealing with the knee, but I was unable to use what was left of my hamstring. It just would not engage.

I’ve always heard the first night following surgery is the worst. I can tell you that this is true. To this day I don’t visit friends immediately post surgery. I assume they are hurting too terribly to have to worry about being nice to me.

My surgery was on a Monday and my rehab began the following Thursday. The fact that I was instructed to take an oxycodone one hour prior to my appointment scared me to death. That could only mean I was in for a painful journey. More on that in my next post.